


May You Bury Me

by cyrene



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: First Kiss, Getting Together, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, Poetry, You Know Keating Ships It, sorry - Freeform, technically canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 23:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15472035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyrene/pseuds/cyrene
Summary: Keating stood at the blackboard and wrote, and as he wrote, he said, “There is a word in Arabic which has no direct translation into English.”Ya'arburnee, read the board in the hasty scrawl they all longed to translate. It was a sad word, a mournful word, Todd could tell, as he rolled it around in his mind tasting what it might feel like oozing off his tongue in so many vowels.





	May You Bury Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amaterasu_rising](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amaterasu_rising/gifts).



> So, I recently introduced my daughter to this most excellent movie and we were totally shipping Todd and Neil together. It was a real bonding moment and I teared up and shit. Sweetie, I'm so sorry for making you watch the sad movie, but you love Robin Williams and the boys were super cute. ;D

 

 

When they walked in to class that day, Keating was writing something on a piece of fine stationary, with heavy tears shining in his usually light eyes. When he put his pen down, he looked up at the class with some surprise, running a hand across that five-o'clock shadow that always came in early, as though he had not noticed the passage of so much time.

 

Keating stood at the blackboard and wrote, and as he wrote, he said, “There is a word in Arabic which has no direct translation into English.”

 

 _Ya'arburnee_ , read the board in the hasty scrawl they all longed to translate. It was a sad word, a mournful word, Todd could tell, as he rolled it around in his mind tasting what it might feel like oozing off his tongue in so many vowels.

 

“Literally, it means, 'may you bury me,' but we just don't have a single word for that sentiment,” Keating explained. “I was writing a letter to my _Ya'arburnee_ , as I do almost every day, and I thought...” he shuddered suddenly, and was present again. “I want you to write about _Ya'arburnee_. It can be whatever format you want, it can be to someone in particular, or just about the concept, how it someday might apply to you...” He laughed a little, at himself, never ever at them. “It's a really broad assignment, I know, but I can't wait to see what you come up with.”

 

He winked at them, his good mood returned, and they began to discuss other things instead. As Keating would say, “Cabbages and Kings.”

 

Todd hoped that no one would notice him quaking in his seat. He couldn't get out of this. If he refused the assignment, Keating would surely bring him up in front of the class like he had last time, and the only thing worse than revealing too much to Keating on paper would be revealing too much to the entire class. Keating noticed, though, and gave him a sad smile and a small nod.

 

Todd felt, as he has felt most of his life, like he was trapped. Like he was drowning, being smothered under the weight of expectation.

 

He'd have to complete the assignment. And then he would probably just die. Because Todd, you see, had a mental illness. He was sick inside, and he would die for the object of his sickness to never find out.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

In the cave, Knox slapped his knees and said, “Okay, give this a shot.”

 

“For _Chri-is_?” they asked him, only mocking a little.

 

Knox nodded, naturally, and unembarrassed. “For Chris.” He read off a crumpled paper from his pocket. He said:

 

 

“ _An electric current flows through my legs, my outreaching arms, my fragile heart, so strong, strong enough to kill -- oh, yes, I die!_

 

_A young universe, hot and dense, ever expanding, reaching out to new heights, so strong, strong enough to create -- oh, yes, I live!”_

 

 

Everything was silent for a minute. Then:

 

“I like it.” Neil, of course, always the first to speak, and always supportive. “I can't explain it, but I like it.”

 

“It doesn't rhyme,” Cameron pointed out.

 

“Maybe it's not a poem?” Gerard countered.

 

“No, it is!” They all turned, with much surprise, to where Todd sat blushing, just as surprised as the others that he'd been the one to say anything. “N-not all poetry has to rhyme or have meter. It's like a... a poem by the Beats. Or something,” he hedged quietly, feeling very stupid until Neil tapped him on the shoulder and smiled and nodded in agreement.

 

“Say it again,” Charlie – _Nuwanda_ – said, bringing his saxophone up. “Slow it down this time.”

 

Knox grinned at his little paper and took a breath.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Keating didn't make them read aloud again, thank goodness. It was purely voluntary. Neil stood up first, fairly bounced out of his seat up to Keating's desk where the two of them had a brief conversation that, for some reason, pulled a guffaw and a clap from their eager-to-be-pleased teacher. Knox did his, with Nuwanda on the saxophone like they had practiced in the cave.

 

Keating asked Todd to stay after class.

 

Todd sat in his seat, hoping to die, as his favorite teacher sat in the desk next to his.

 

“Mr. Anderson,” Keating said slowly, “I know we talk a lot about poetry, and life, and love, but I want to make sure you're all right. I'm a little concerned because of the nature of your poem, and I want to make sure you understand that this assignment was not an invitation to off yourself.” Keating grinned, a little unsure of his own joke, and that lack of confidence is devastating to Todd.

 

“I'm okay,” Todd assured him. “I can take care of myself.”

 

Keating nodded, always trusting in his boys. “In that case, two favors: the first, I would like to read this out loud, just to you. I think you should hear it, just once, and keep an open mind, because this came from inside you, Mr. Anderson, and it is something _remarkable_.”

 

Todd sighed, but nodded in agreement. Keating cleared his voice and read, in that special way he had of performing:

 

 

“ _I call on Venus, goddess of desire,_

_to fill my empty lungs with blackened smoke_

_to burn the whole world with her rage and fire_

_to kill that inside me which you hath woke_

 

_I call Eleos forth to touch your face_

_I beg her to have mercy and forgive_

_I tell her this is not the human race_

_whatever she may do, do let you live_

 

_I call upon the one God, Jehovah,_

_who knows everything I ever did wrong:_

_throw my soul into a supernova_

_lest you can hear me singing forth this song_

 

_I call on water, greater still than Noah's fame;_

_a flood to wash my face and, someday, drown my name.”_

 

 

Todd winced. Those last two lines – the ones with twelve syllables instead of ten – were haunting him, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to change them. They had been the first ones he'd come up with, the ones that had been rolling around in his mouth for days before he finally had to write them down.

 

“My only suggestion,” said Mr. Keating lightly, “is that a sonnet should have a turn at the end. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, and I want you to try to find it. Now for my second favor –” Todd had forgotten, in the wake of the reading, that Keating had asked for two – “is that you sign this paper and let me keep it.”

 

Todd started. “W-what? Why?”

 

“Because someday,” his teacher said with that special Keating gleam in his eye, “you're going to be a very famous writer, and I want this for my collection.”

 

It cost Todd nothing to let go of it, especially since he had written it out four times before he'd deemed his handwriting worthy, so he signed the bottom, “ _To Mr. Keating, Carpe diem, Todd Anderson_ ” and let Keating have it.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

“Can I tell you a secret?” Neil whispered into the dark of their room two nights later. They were putting on their coats to go out to the old cave for a meeting. Todd nodded.

 

“Of – of course, Neil. You can tell me anything.”

 

 _Except that you're in love_ , his mind begged, _please just don't let it be that_.

 

“I didn't turn anything in to Keating.”

 

Todd, surprised, stopped getting ready for a second. “How'd you get away with that?” he asked, intensely jealous of Neil in that moment. When Todd had tried that move, he'd ended up in front of the whole class, raving about a sweaty-toothed madman with a blanket of truth.

 

Neil shrugged. “I told him I already had someone like that, and said that, for my assignment, I was going to confess my love.”

 

Things were quiet as they snuck out to meet the others, who were already halfway to the woods. Todd's heart was sinking. It was breaking. It was over for him. Was it Hermia, from the play? It had to be Hermia; Todd didn't know anything about girls, but he knew she was _gorgeous_.

 

“W-what are you going to d-do?” There was a dying part inside of his heart that didn't want to know; didn't want to hear this.

 

“I thought you'd never ask,” Neil joked, flashing that white grin of his. Neil's eyes sparkled in the dark as he leaned in close, and breathed a single word into Todd's ear, one which made his heart race and the hair stand up on the back of his head.

 

“ _Ya'arburnee,”_ he whispered.

 

“Y-yarbur... Neil?”

 

He was dying. He really was. Surely, Neil did not mean. But then Neil, with his perfect cheekbones and deep soulful eyes, always took the time to slow down when Todd could not catch up, to repeat himself when necessary.

 

“ _Ya'arburnee,”_ he said again, and brushed just one finger down the side of Todd's face.

 

“No,” said Todd, a burst of stubbornness making the word come out more forceful than he had meant. Neil's eyes widened with shock, so Todd pressed on before his roommate, his best friend, the love of his life, could say anything else. “I go first. If – if you mean it, then I've got to go first. _Ya'arburnee,”_ he insisted. “Because I can't live in a world without you.”

 

“All right,” Neil replied, eyebrows knitted with concern, “if it's so important to you.”

 

“Promise,” Todd insisted, holding out his pinkie in a fit of childishness.

 

Neil laughed and linked their fingers. “Promise. But if if you're going to rejoin the great poets of before us first, then you've at least got to promise to make them wait a good long while. Because we've got things to do here first.”

 

“Promise,” Todd whispered with a firm nod. Then he reached forward with his other hand, hooked it around Neil's neck, and pulled the other boy forward into what would be Todd's first kiss.

 

It was a little awkward in the beginning. They bumped nosed and clashed teeth before they found a good rhythm, but once they did the meter and rhyme were _perfect_. Todd, as he had been dreaming of for – _oh_ – he didn't even know how long, got to run his hand through Neil's soft hair, which caused Todd to smile and unintentionally pull back just a little – at least until he felt Neil's hands, through the thickness of his school-issue coat, grab him by the waist and pull him back in.

 

When they parted, they were breathless, little huffs of air creating clouds of vapor in the cold around them.

 

Todd could hear crashing footprints approaching, followed by the unmistakable voice of Nuwanda: “Hey, are you two ever – oh my God! You owe me two dollars, Knoxious!”

 

“You made a bet on this?!” Neil didn't know whether to look happy or disapproving, and his face fluctuated between the two.

 

They began arguing over it being just a _little_ bet, and no one noticed Todd, as usual. So he took the opportunity to, rather uncharacteristically, gather a handful of dead leaves off the ground and shove them down the back of Charlie's – sorry, _Nuwanda's_ – jacket, producing a satisfying yelp from Nuwanda and a laugh from the others.

 

“What'd you do that for?” Nuwanda wanted to know, as he tried to shimmy the leaves out from under his collar.

 

Todd grinned, not knowing that this was the first time his friends had seen him do so. “Yawp!” he replied, and then he turned and ran in roughly the direction of the cave.

 

He could hear them behind him, the people who meant most to him in the world, yawping in reply. Todd had never in his life been this happy.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Poetry is mine, and more can be found [here](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1980587418/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1530540983&sr=1-5&keywords=polyamorous).


End file.
